Mad City: A Novel

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Summary: Thank you Ms. Hamilton!
Review: This book got under my skin and will stay there. The prose is wonderful. I kept jotting down my favorite passages, especially the ones about 'Is that all there is?' concerning work down at the Trim'N Tidy. I compare this to Winter Birds by Jim Grimsley

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Summary: Humbly Beautiful!
Review: "In my bones I'm so scared, but the mystery is in my heart--that where I have the gumption." Ruth knows she has to make a journey into the painful past if she is to make sense of what's happened to her and to heal for the future. Ruth's Aunt Sid doesn't understand how her clear intelligence went unrecognized. Ruth knows we are the products of our limited environments. The language she had to speak to be understood was not the language of poetry. This book answers the question if we are products of our environment. I feel it proves that if we stay, we may pay a dear price for the lessons learned there. If we are able to dream, we can overcome. The book ends with Ruth making a simple statement: "Sometime I'm going to try my wings." A must read book for everyone

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Summary: A stunning but grim tale.
Review: Once I started this book, I couldn't put it down. However, once I finished it, I wish I hadn't read it. Jane Hamilton makes this family of dysfunctional characters so tangible, so understandable that I was able to empathize with some very unsavory behaviour. While it's so tempting and so easy to categorize the world according to what is right and what is wrong, Ms. Hamilton plops us right in that grey region where moral sensibility fights with human compassion. I cannot get the characters of Ruth, her mother, and her husband, Ruby, out of my mind...and I wish I could. I haven't been so disturbed by a book in years. Ms. Hamilton is a brilliant writer, but I hope she picks less grim subjects for future examination. My only criticism of the book is the character of Ruth's aunt. I didn't really believe her motivation and her desire to help Ruth. All in all, this is a brilliant piece of writing that I cannot recommend---it is just too bleak

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Summary: An emotional read, you become part of Ruths world.
Review: This story with its highs and lows, draws you in with the hints of dark consequences you know the narrator (Ruth) can not avoid. It tells the tale of a family composed of people we have all seen -- the mother, overbearing and sarcastic, we want to slap her long before the tragedy unfolds; the brother who moves on to "live his own life"; the Aunt who cares but keeps her distance; the husband, loving but dim- witted, who no matter who or what he was would not be accepted as a "son", and Ruth -- destined to a life of sameness, a breath away from a good life because of feelings of duty, responsibility, and insecurity.

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Summary: Long and overwrought
Review: The popularity of this book is probably what happens when talk show hosts start telling people what to read -- and people are misguided enough to listen. This book was too long by half. The language and voice were not convincing, and the characters, despite an excess of description and plot, still managed to be one dimensional. The narrator's constant victimization is wearing rather than sympathetic. If you want to read a book that sets out to accomplish the same task, but accomplishes it with brevity, grace, and power, read Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons

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Summary: Astonishing that an author could create this rich character!
Review: I am still reading it. Actually I have a possible Jury call up tomorrow and am HOPING it materializes because I HAVE to read this beautiful creation. These deep insights must come from SOME experience of real-life suffering. It is NOT depressing - it is rich in metaphors that spring from nowhere ... but the disturbing aspect is that there must be many people captivated as Ruth was - and unable to break from their circumstances. Aunt Syd's profound impact on Ruth is a lesson in the effects of unwitting kindness. The most amazing revelation to me thus far is the scope of the unrevealed ramifications of Ruth's mind and emotions

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Summary: Stunning Novel - Couldn't Put This Book Down
Review: Jane Hamilton is a first-class writer. She's a poet and a novelist. Her descriptions are humorous, touching and memorable. Keepsake phrases litter the book throughout and are worth reading over and over, sometimes smiling - sometimes tearing up. The story is of a young girl born into circumstances of doom. She is trapped within her own mind. She seems to the reader very bright and yet at the same time, "stuck" and naive. The ending took my breath away and left me to think about the plot more deeply for a while. The novel was a reminder of Sling Blade (vice versa)in that both main characters are sad and hopelessly traumatized by life. The only difference with Ruth is that she is never enlightened. I went directly to the bookstore and bought Hamilton's first novel. This is not a "feel good" book. Stay away if you can't handle unhappy plots

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Summary: WHO NEEDS this kind of low-life novel anyhow???
Review: Why does Oprah keep selecting books of depression, opression, poor choices, despair and lack of hope???? Forget it! There are some wonderful, inspirational and uplifting, motivating books to be read. Who needs this?

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Summary: Good, but not necessarily for everyone
Review: Jane Hamilton has written a superior novel here, and as such has a definitive appeal for the eclectic. Those into the more smarmy romantic novels need not travel further. You need not be a member of the intelligentsia to understand Hamilton's subtle symbolic meanderings here, but one does have to be able to be aware that they do exist. Hamilton has made a sincere effort here to write a serious novel, and I feel that she has succeeded marvelously. But to digest Ruth's prose on the superficial level suggested by previous reviewers can only inculcate banality. The beauty of this book is far too deep to be equated with the same sort of surface perusal one gives to a Grisham novel. Hence, if you are a Grisham fan, this is probably going to be an unsatisfactory book for you. Hamilton's style is described as "Dickensian" by the Los Angeles times, indubitably meaning her ability to paint characters from society's dregs and fashion them into fully-rounded, larger-than-life characters. There is a sense of naturalism that runs deep in Hamilton's prose, evoking the feel of an Ernest Hemingway or Jack London novel, but perhaps not with their typically unerring diction. And, of course, there are strains of bathos that might even put the lachrymose Louisa May Alcott to shame. Added to all this is Hamilton's final and shocking catharsis, making this book particularly well worth the discerning reader's time and investment. In comparison to the latest Grisham or Stephen King novel, Hamilton is ineffably the better buy.

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Summary: Ending is Great...
Review: The thoughts of Ruth is well told in everyday use of language. The simple way of looking at everyday things, the sadness of not understanding the simple things. I liked the ending a real surprise.. Just keep reading because the ending is great